


the significance of the house

by lacrimalis



Series: chasing ghosts [1]
Category: Markiplier Story World, Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: But Please Give Darkiplier His Own Character Tag, Character Study, Haunted Houses, Origin Story, Other, POV Second Person, Tag Wranglers I'm So Sorry I Know Your Job Is Difficult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22039222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacrimalis/pseuds/lacrimalis
Summary: Mark believes he has struck a deal with the mysterious entity that lives in Markiplier Manor.But the manor still remembers fondly the years during which its name was Barnum. And it has not forgotten Mark's role in The Colonel's terrible fate.
Relationships: Celine | The Seer & Damien | The Mayor & Darkiplier, Darkiplier & Wilford Warfstache | William J. Barnum | The Colonel
Series: chasing ghosts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591345
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. becoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gyre_and_Gimble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyre_and_Gimble/gifts).



_“Real isn't how you are made [...] It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”_

_The Velveteen Rabbit,_ Margery Williams Bianco

You've been in the family since before you can remember. Holding them in your heart, feeling them walk through your halls, watching over them as they slept. During this period of time, which you might describe as your 'youth', the resident you most fondly remember is William James Barnum. Ever since your construction youhad stood on that hill, stately and unapproachable, an air of distant wealth about your eaves and balconies. But young William, adventuresome and unfettered, had climbed and swung from your banisters, watched the stars from the roof which he had reached through a window just large enough to permit his small frame to climb. Much to the chagrin of his corralling parents and caretakers, he treated you like a beloved playground, a secret tree house made of monsters and mysteries for him to bring to life and light with his imagination.

Charmed by the way he inadvertently personified you, you began colluding with William almost unconsciously, permitting him to be in places he could not possibly be, covering his tracks by twisting your halls to the bafflement of his caretakers -- as well as yours. You never minded the way he credited his impossible escapes to his own cunning. His enjoyment was your enjoyment, his play your pleasure. To have your well-trodden halls explored over and over again, with the wonder of discovery every single time, to receive the fond devotion of such a kind-hearted and imaginative child, was a pride and a joy that you had never yet found occasion to experience.

You doted on William, did your utmost to make his adventures more exciting, his narrow escapes more thrilling. When he stumbled and fell, you willed the floor softer, the air thicker, gentling each unavoidable blow to the best of your ability.

When William inherited you, you couldn't have been happier. He grew to have different pastimes and interests, taking his adventures far from the walls within which you could protect and entertain him, but that was all right. He always returned to you with new souvenirs and stories to join the clutter of his presence.

That was another thing: the meticulous cleanliness with which his family had kept you at a distance all but vanished along with them. With William as the new master of the house -- though to your mind, he was your _only_ master by virtue of your affection for him -- he brought his imaginative play not only to his conduct within your walls, but to the worldly possessions he filled you with. You became a reflection of him, of his many adventures and experiences, his interests and passions.

One of the most significant changes William made upon his inheritance of the house was the care and attention he devoted to the cobwebbed wine cellar. His parents had hoarded its contents, airily declaring each bottle reserved for a "special occasion" that never came to pass, and subsequently the spirits were left to gather dust and regrets, untasted. When William inherited he threw an absolute _rager_ of a party, cracking open the lion's share of the bottles in celebration. When the butler mistakenly dropped a bottle of borderline antediluvian vintage, William simply waved his hand.

"No trouble, old sport, no trouble at all!" William assured the tremulous butler. "No use crying over spilled wine, as I always say. In fact, why don't we think of it as breaking a bottle upon the prow of a ship, bound for its maiden voyage? They say it's good luck, you know!"

The analogy was hardly lost on you: you are the ship, and this new chapter of William's life, the voyage. Though the butler hastens to tidy the spill, you drink as much of the wine as you can through the grout between the cobbles, accepting the gift William has extended to you with gratitude.

After that first celebration, William brought countless friends inside you in subsequent parties, igniting your hearth with their vivacious activity and energy. Many were unfamiliar to you, appearing only once or twice before being called away on some business or adventure, after which you did not see them again. But some were nearly as permanent fixtures within the house as William himself -- those being chiefly Celine, Damien, and Mark.

You couldn't help but adore Celine, for whom you had watched William pine within your walls for decades. And his very fond friends Damien and Mark you loved just as dearly.

Tonight, William tells his friends he is planning an expedition, bound for some far-flung region you know of only by the little red pin William has placed on the world map hanging in his study. He asks them to housesit you in his absence, which makes you feel a bit abashed. Your foundations are _hardly_ in danger of sinking, and you would never allow someone untoward to step inside you -- not without meeting some terrible accident as punishment for their trespassing. You are capable of taking care of yourself, though you have no way of telling William this.

At any rate, you appreciate the thought. While you would much prefer William's company, you know full well that his childhood adventures within your walls have lead to this wanderlust in his adulthood. You like his friends well enough, and you're happy to watch over them and ensure their stay is a comfortable one. Damien and Celine cite some prior obligation, expressing their sincerest apologies -- at which point Mark sits forward in his chair, assuring William that he would be more than happy to keep an eye on you.

William thanks him, and the rest of the evening passes in comfortable, quiet conversation before the beating heart of your fireplace. You extend your warmest well-wishes to the four of them, willing them to be happy and comfortable before William departs on the morrow. A collective sigh rises from the gathering -- and from you, too.

* * *

William departs in the morning, bidding you a whimsical farewell. It is only his imaginative whimsy that permits him to pretend he thinks you are alive, but for that you appreciate him. You do not know how it might feel to love your master so ardently and not at least have him occasionally address you. Even if it is in jest, you wish him luck and bid him farewell in your own way: you shut and lock tight the windows he has forgotten to secure, and you straighten his bed sheets, which he has left rumpled in his haste to catch his plane.

As his conveyance to the airport departs, a wind whips up the trees of the grounds in an enthusiastic wave.

* * *

You do not think you like Mark very much, after all.

He arrives in the afternoon of the same day William departs, bidding his driver farewell at the cul-de-sac and sauntering up your stairs with a confidence that makes the cobwebs in your attic quiver with uncertainty. He prises open your front door, with a key you can only surmise William entrusted to him earlier, and steps into the foyer as if he owns the place.

Mark closes the front door softly behind him, sending shivers down your staircases.

The sound of the lock turning in the silence is louder than a gunshot.

His eyes upon your interior feel uncomfortably like an invasion, even moreso than the physical incursion of his progress through the halls of your edifice. In all your years under William's care, during which he has invited Mark inside innumerable times, you have never seen such a cold, probing expression on Mark's face.

It makes your paint want to peel beneath his gaze, and it takes great effort not to allow such a thing to happen, so intense is the feeling of _wrongness_ you get from being looked at by this strange, unsettling creature.

As he walks, he trails his fingers idly along your walls and banisters. It is a gentle, barely feather-light touch, that nonetheless fills you with inexplicable unease. It is almost _covetous_ in nature, and your curtains twist in apprehension to imagine what he might be thinking. When he arrives in the living room and reaches out to touch the armchair he'd occupied yesterday evening, a build-up of static rejects his touch, shocking him into recoiling and sucking on his finger to soothe it.

If you had the anatomical prerequisites to produce a vindictive smile, you most assuredly would.

Unfortunately, Mark is undeterred. He lights a fire in your fireplace, which you are reluctant to permit but powerless to prevent, when faced with the chemical processes of exothermic combustion. You begrudgingly warm his hands, though not without spitting disdainfully at him with your embers. His frantic slapping at his singed sleeve gratifies you, though you are not even sure why you have suddenly decided to dislike him.

You reflect on how your first impression of William came about. Somehow you could sense his compassionate heart and as his wondrous mind as he made play of your shadowed corners and hidden depths.

In that same way, you sense Mark's ill intent as clearly as a red wine stain on a white carpet.

It distresses you that you've never noticed this side of Mark before. How long has he privately comported himself with such malice in his eyes and heart? How long have you permitted his presence in your walls, believing he is a friend? Believing he bears your master no grudge?

Mark raids the wine cellar, as William doubtless encouraged him to do before he departed. Still, you feel betrayed by your revelation of his true nature, and thus feel no inclination to cooperate with the man. You will the wine to sour, and he chokes on it.

_Good._

It will be dreadful, you think, having this wretched creature prowling your halls with its hungry eyes and proprietary touch. But you will endure it for William. Mark has, after all, technically not done anything untoward yet.

And still you cannot shake the impression that, privately, Mark has already laid claim to you.

* * *

Mark brings something within your walls that immediately puts you on edge.

It is simply a box, not dissimilar in size or in the sounds it makes when agitated from the board games stacked in the closet under the stairs. He leaves at night, giving you a reprieve from the sticky molasses dreams that seep into your walls when he sleeps in the master bedroom -- _William's_ bedroom, and the audacity of that makes you balk, but you can do nothing about it. It is with concerted effort that you do not allow the malice of his thoughts to warp the bedroom itself, for you have spent years ensuring the master bedroom is comfortable and safe for William to sleep in. You fear that if you do not fight the urge to tighten your jaws while Mark sleeps there, that upon William's return, your true master may accidentally catch on the edges of your teeth.

When Mark returns in the early hours of the morning, he brings with him the box, which you hate with almost the same intuitive immediacy as you hated Mark the first time he stepped inside you alone.

From Celine and Damien's brief visits and phone calls with Mark, you have gleaned that William is meant to return from his expedition very soon. You had looked upon the promised day with hopeful relief until now, but this strange box transforms your excitement into apprehension.

Mark finally leaves early in the morning of the day upon which you are given to understand William will be returning in the evening. He does not wait to welcome William home, as an old friend should, but after weeks of exposure to his cold appraisal and his dark, unsettling thoughts, you do not expect him to -- nor do you _want_ him to, for though it means William may be disappointed, it also means that at least you can begin to recover from the damage his presence has done to you. Mark's driver comes rolling up the hill in the pre-dawn light to avail you of the man's unsettling presence, and you silently bid him good _bloody_ riddance, dropping walnuts on the hood of the car as they pull away.

But he leaves the box. You had watched him gift-wrap it with beautifully sparkling paper before placing it prominently on a side table near the entryway. William always leaves his canes and walking sticks there, so he's sure to see it when he returns. Mark even writes a note. Though you strain your powers of observation, you cannot make out what it says. This he places atop the box, after which he makes his way to the front door, whistling jauntily.

You have never had reason to be anything less than overjoyed when William returns from his travels. He almost always brings a suitcase full of souvenirs, which he hems and haws over how he will arrange inside you in his many display cases. He usually throws his own 'Welcome Back' parties, depleting the wine cellar and replenishing it with strange and exotic new vintages he has tasted and discovered during his time abroad. And when he recounts the details of his adventures to his countless friends, you alone have the privilege of hearing it every time he tells it, feeling quite as if you might have been there yourself.

This time, however, the sense of foreboding you can't shake dampens your excitement, even for so auspicious an occasion as your master's long-awaited return. You know with every fiber of your plaster, hardwood, glass and cement that William must not under any circumstances touch that box, yet you can do little about it. You cannot pick up objects like some kind of poltergeist. Your only capabilities to affect the world inside you are strictly, in your experience, under the purview of hospitality: the taste of the food and wine, the comfort of the guests, whether or not someone trips on a wrinkle in the rug, that sort of thing. You even make a valiant effort to will the box into the walls, or perhaps into the fireplace, where your fiery conviction may catch it alight and burn the accursed object so that William never lays a hand on it, even if only to dispose of it himself.

Nothing doing. The box remains, and you stew in your dread.

Just this once, you think, feeling wretched and ungrateful, you would be happier if William didn't come home at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark: Don't you want to know what's in the box? Not the lies he's told you?


	2. discovering

_ The house is one of the key elements that separates modern humanity from its more primitive antecedents. No other creature goes to such lengths to create lasting, permanent shelter for itself, nor regards such shelters with such reverence and import. Why do human beings of our modern age foster this tremendous sympathy towards their homes? There are many reasons, of course, but perhaps it is due in some small part to seeing them as a reflection of ourselves. _

_ Anatomy, _ kittyhorrorshow

Drums.

As evening approaches, you are sure you hear the sound of drums. A percussive _thud, thud, thud,_ which grows inexorably in volume and tempo, reverberating through your beams and floorboards. It is not unlike a heartbeat, and you wonder if somehow you have manifested a pulse in the depths of your despair over William's impending fate. You try to move, and your supports groan, but nothing happens. You do not have a body, after all, so perhaps it should not come as so great a disappointment.

You trace the vibrations back to the box – that _damned_ box that Mark left behind. You are offended, frankly, that something so small and innocuous should have the greater power of manifestation between the two of you, to be making drumming sounds within your walls. You push against it, and you can only _reel_ at the sheer breadth and depth of its aura. It leaves you feeling childish and small. The box is not… inherently evil, but it _is_ remarkably dangerous, and much, much older than you – older even than the hills upon which your foundations sit.

The drumming reaches a crescendo, pounding on your mind. It makes your eaves ache, and you find yourself comparing it to the pain William sometimes complains of the mornings after a particularly roaring party.

A headache, you think dazedly.

Then it stops, and in your relief you very nearly fail to notice William coming in through the front door with his rolling suitcase jangling with new souvenirs for you.

"Home, sweet home!" William sighs, and you reach out to him unthinkingly, glad to see him despite the ill tidings which await him in Mark's gift-wrapped Trojan horse. A few candles spring to life in your enthusiasm. Noticing them, William calls, "Oh? Mark, are you still here?"

No, you think bitterly, but he forgot his terrible cursed artifact, and he seems to have accidentally gift wrapped and addressed it to you.

William takes notice of the bright red package and note. "Must have just missed each other," he mutters. "Dearest William… for allowing me the privilege… lovely home… A gift? Oh, that's sweet," William coos, taking the lot into the living room.

William lights the fireplace, and it springs to life for him with an unnatural quickness. Then he goes down to the wine cellar, and the light flashes on a particularly lovely vintage in suggestion, which he decants into a fine crystal glass as he settles before your roaring hearth. He kicks his shoes off and leans back, and you inform the armchair that it ought to endeavor to be the most comfortable seat it has ever been in its life.

"Ah," William sighs contentedly. "It _is_ good to be home."

Perhaps you can lull him to sleep before he opens the box. Then surely Celine and Damien will come to call tomorrow, or at the very least that loathsome blackguard _Mark,_ and William will not have to face the contents of the box alone. You weave an air of comfort through the living room, banking the fire so it crackles softly, soothingly. You take heart when William's eyelids begin to droop. Surely he is weary from the expedition, the hours of travel he must have taken to return to your welcoming halls. Surely it would do no harm to bask in the moment, to allow himself a moment of respite now that he is finally home…

And then those _godforsaken_ drums start up again.

William jolts to wakefulness and takes a bracing gulp of the wine you recommended (which _really_ ought to be sipped). "I say, my ears must not have popped when I stepped off the plane! I could have sworn I heard… Well," he trails off and claps his hands, rubbing them in anticipation as he gazes at the bright red box. "It would simply be _rude_ not to open Mark's gift before I've drifted off!"

… Of course, you think. You love your fool of a master, but _damn_ his sense of propriety and gratitude.

You fear it'll be the death of him, one of these days.

He tears the glossy red packaging away, and it flutters to the floor before the hearth, the flames reflected in it like a diorama of the fiery pits.

"'Jumanji'?" William says, which distracts you from your morbid thoughts. The man has a host of such nonsense words in his repertoire, but this one you have never heard before. You redirect your attention to the box in his hands, and the text is large enough that it is easy for you to make out. As he said, the word 'JUMANJI' is emblazoned across the middle of the box. The imagery and design of its exterior is not unlike the other board games sitting in the closet, but the make of this one is much finer – not any old mass-produced, flimsy cardstock and chipboard, but real, solid wood.

Certainly William can recognize it as an antique with his keen eye, but there is no way for him to sense how ancient the artifact truly is. Only you can do that, for some reason.

"Oh, how quaint!" William crows, delighted with his ‘gift’. He adjusts his monocle to inspect the box more closely. "This woodgrain is simply marvelous… and the paint is _remarkably_ well preserved!"

Ordinarily, you enjoy William's penchant for monologue and speaking his thoughts aloud. It is something he has always done, ever since he was slaying imagined rivals and beasts in the confines of your attic as a child. At the moment, though, you would be hard-pressed to describe it as anything but torturous.

Please just leave it, you beg him silently. Why don’t you play tomorrow, with Celine and Damien and Mark? It should be a surprise for all of you, shouldn’t it? Don’t be a spoilsport!

“... Perhaps I ought to play this tomorrow, with Celine and Damien and Mark,” William says thoughtfully.

You can hardly believe what you’re hearing. Could it be that your thoughts are reaching him? Stunned and urgent, you redouble your efforts. Yes, that’s right! Friendship is strengthened by sharing new experiences, after all. This is something that William says all the time, so surely it will strike a chord with him.

“That’s true…” William says, stroking the curled ends of his handsome mustache.

Had you the means to stand agog, you are sure you would. Can he really hear you? Your beloved William, your pride and joy, your darling master, can _really_ hear you? The possibilities abound. You can finally tell him all the things you’ve been aching to say – how ardently you cherish him, how deeply you appreciate him and all his idiosyncrasies, the pride you take in protecting him and housing him, the fond memories you have of his adventurous youth, the threat Mark poses to you both – 

_Mark,_ you think, with such venom and ferocity that it makes your beams quiver, and if you are not much mistaken, it seems to make a shiver go through William, too. You chide yourself to be more mindful of the effects your newfound symbiosis may have on your most cherished master, tamping down on your eagerness to communicate.

“Ah, I’m sure they won’t mind!” William says. “Besides, I’m not too old yet to enjoy a game by myself!”

NO, you think frantically – but whatever tenuous connection had permitted you to speak with him (if there ever was one, and you had not simply imagined it) has been broken.

William opens the box, and it unfolds into a simple playing board. He takes a more appropriately measured sip of his wine, but you cannot even take gratification that he is finally appreciating the vintage you suggested properly.

You have a terrible, awful feeling about this.

“Now, let’s see here. No instruction booklet, but – aha! ‘Jumanji’,” William reads, “‘A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind’. Oh, it rhymes! How positively _darling._ Roll the dice… doubles get another turn… Well!” He chortles. “A rather simple game, isn’t it? No skill involved at all.”

Deceptively so, you think. You’d wager your window panes that whatever this game has in store will require a bit more skill than the _Pictionary_ or _Clue_ in the closet under the stairs.

“I daresay it won’t be much fun to play… Perhaps we can devise a more interesting set of rules? Oh, or we could make it a drinking game!” William cheers in triumph. “Bully!” And, well, yes, you have to admit that it _is_ a bully idea – or it would be, if this thing weren’t _completely_ cursed.

William spends a little longer inspecting the board. The rules inlaid in the side appear to be of particular interest to him, with their painted letters on their woven canvas. He murmurs appreciative things you can’t quite make out, and the polished wood seems to gleam more brightly beneath his praise, as if – as if it’s _preening._

Watch it, you think at the thing. A log splits with a loud _crack_ in the fireplace. But the gameboard pays you no mind.

“If I’m not mistaken…” William says, leaning back and adjusting his monocle to retire the magnifying lenses. “It seems that not all the starting points are the same distance from the finish line. One could, in this way, begin with a small handicap.” He fiddles with the sides of the box until a side compartment toggles open, and he produces a few finely-carved playing pieces of stone or bone. William marvels in admiration at this new discovery: the pieces seem to glint and shine anew under his attention, and you cannot roll your eyes, but you so dearly _wish_ you could.

Perhaps the artifact will grow so full of itself from William’s praise that it’ll do you all a favor, and spontaneously combust.

“But where’s the fun in that?” William demands. “A game should be challenging, after all! Even if it _is_ a game of chance.” Thus decided, he places one of the tokens firmly on one of the four starting points. Knowing William, you can only conclude that he has chosen the longest path to the finish line.

The air shifts within you. It leaves you breathless, this strange, otherworldly breeze which seems to emanate from the board, yet simultaneously seems to come from without and reach inward, _toward_ the board. You feel humbled, yet at once larger than you have ever been.

You are, of a sudden, occupied by multitudes.

William inspects the dice, murmuring something about bones and craftsmanship, but the board is giddy and thrumming and does not have the patience to withstand any more of your master’s compliments. A thousand drums seem to strike as one, a single, foundations-shaking sound which startles both you and William – and he drops the dice. With all the gambling William and his friends do in the living room, your ability to make out the number of pips by the shapes they make on the die face tells you that they have landed on two sixes.

“Doubles!” William cries, distracted from the question of the strange sound by his lucky throw. He reaches out to move his token, but falters when he sees the game piece has begun to move on its own.

You _definitely_ don’t like that.

William peers at the board, stroking his mustache. “Fascinating,” he whispers, at the edge of his seat as the token marches slowly to the twelfth place on the board. The circular centerpiece which marks the finish line glints with a green inner light, swirling and resolving from smoke into words. William reads: “They like to laugh, but they’re not your friends… If you take them lightly, it will be your end.”

Sounds like Mark, you think.

And then there are hyenas in the kitchen.

* * *

You _hate_ this thing.

It would be one thing if it stuck to making an unholy mess of your interior, scraping with claws and tangling with creeping vines your windows, doors and floors. But William is _elated_ with his new toy, jumping over and under furniture and bounding through the halls with such verve and delight as you haven’t seen him display since he was a child.

Okay, fine.

_Fine._

You’re jealous that he likes the game so much. You’re big enough to admit it.

You were worried that this strange artifact would harm William, but he has faced every challenge so far with aplomb and delight. Perhaps Mark truly _did_ intend this to be a gift, and not a trap laid to spring when William had let his guard down.

Though you admit it only begrudgingly, you suppose you are enjoying _yourself_ a little, too. Many of the creatures with whom William has returned to tell of his close encounters outside your walls, you have never seen before. And yet here they are now, beneath your roof. You can finally see in person (so to speak) a fraction of the wondrous flora and fauna that he always speaks of so highly – some that are new to both you _and_ William, which makes it all the more exciting.

William uses his knowledge of your interior to evade and trap the gameboard's many dangers, and it reminds you of the way he galavanted through your halls in his childhood. In all his years of filling you with his souvenirs, he has ample ammunition to fend them off.

A display case is shattered to make use of the antique Belgian flintlock pistol inside, and William fends off the hyenas. Then the Georgian naval cutlass is liberated from its place of pride above the mantle to hack away at creeping vines that seem to come from your very walls. William narrowly avoids the spine-shooting purple flowers as he cuts them down.

The vagaries of the gameboard’s incursions upon your structure (and, to an even more forgivable extent, the collateral damage of William defending himself) are a small price to pay for the youthful light of wonder and adventure in your master’s eyes. You had almost forgotten what that looked like on his face.

He taunts his foes and climbs over furniture, seeking high ground on your second floor with the gameboard tucked tightly under one arm. He barricades himself in the master bedroom, and you are glad that you went to the effort not to make the room more dangerous while it housed Mark. He jumps on the bed and unfolds the gameboard. His token has progressed nearly to the finish line with only four squares to go, and as he rolls the dice, you are just as excited as he is for his impending victory.

The dice land on a two and a one. He is one square short of the finish line. But this far into the game, what is one more obstacle to your brave, cunning, inimitable master?

The crystal ball gleams green, and William reads aloud: “In the jungle you must wait… until the dice read five or eight. I get to _go_ to the jungle? Oh, this is too much! Mark, my boy, you’ve really outdone yourself!”

The atmosphere shifts, and you grow uneasy.

“... Wait a moment,” William says. “If I’m in the jungle… who’s going to roll the dice?”

That is your concern as well. A chasm bursts open inside you – not physically, but in your mind. A world peers into you, and it is ancient. Impressions of thick jungle foliage, exotic bird cries and the scent of rain spill into you. To make a human comparison, the differential in strength and age between you might be likened to that between a newborn child and a god. You quail beneath it.

But you will not let it take William.

You wrap around him with everything you have: your meager abilities of hospitality, your fondest memories of his childhood adventures and his raging parties of recent years, of watching over him tirelessly each night he slept within your walls for the past twenty-five years.

“Oh, horsefeathers,” William says. His fingers vanish into dust, whirlwinding into the gameboard and through your mind’s eye, out into the strange world beyond. You try to catch the pieces of him as they pass through the places where you can, for _once,_ very nearly touch. But he slips like sand through your proverbial fingers.

You don’t know what to do. You have always been content to simply _be._ You have never _needed_ to be anything more than the immovable structure in which your favorite person just so happens to live. You have always been enough for William, with your unnoticed little nudges and your power over transient things like the atmosphere of a room, or the relative comfort of a length of silence _._

His arms are gone, now, and you despair over your inability to do anything about the process that is already well underway. He tilts his head up to the ceiling and laughs mournfully. You can almost imagine he is looking at you.

“I’ll miss you, old chum,” he says, and it breaks your heart to realize he _is_ looking at you. He is _speaking_ to you. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone… but in the meantime, take care of my friends for me, will you?” William winks playfully, and of course, of _course_ you’ll take care of his friends. You would do anything for him.

“There’s a dear,” William says, and the rest of him passes through you into that other world.

The wind settles. The chasm inside you closes, impervious to your attempts to pry it open and follow William through. Everything is still and silent – even the plants and animals the game has left behind are suddenly quiet, strewn as they are about your halls as if by a careless child, who thinks nothing of putting her toys away when she is done with them. Not like William, considerate and conscientious of such things to a fault. Not at all.

William is gone.

The gameboard, still sitting open on the bed, gives an air of downtrodden shame. And what right does it have? It _did_ this.

You do not have eyes to weep, nor a voice to cry out in suffering. But your pipes boil, and your light fixtures flash, and your gorge rises to let loose an impossible scream.

* * *

George looks up at Barnum Manor to see it screaming and flashing like some kind of banshee. Its doors and windows fly open, from which several dozen jungle animals flee with wild eyes.

The groundskeeper wipes his nose with the back of his gardening glove and sniffs. “Not touchin’ that,” he mutters, and goes back to transplanting a hyacinth bush.


End file.
